Monthly Archive for January, 2005

TiVo Status!

Published
by
Howard
on January 22nd 2005
in General, Internet, Software and TV
. 1 Comment

I had a spare half hour, so I knocked together a script that will parse my TiVo’s Tivoweb info page and consolidate the recording information into a little status display, like so:

The information is cached and will be updated once every fifteen minutes so as to not overload the TiVo itself. It’ll appear in the sidebar on the right there, so you can see what my TiVo is doing. I know, I know, I’m a geek. So sue me.

Tivoweb itself sometimes reports no information on the page. I’m not sure why - it may be something to do with resource locking in the Tivo’s MFS database. Whatever - when it happens all you’ll see is a grey blob and no further info!

Comment spam just gets weirder…

Published
by
Howard
on January 19th 2005
in General
. Closed

The comment spammers never go away, they just start leaving bizarre comments:

Hello, I just wanted to say you have a very informative site which really made me think, Thanks ! A site with a wealth of info.!…thanks very much! Have a nice Day!!

I like the over use of exclamation marks here and the odd placement of capital letters.

Congratulation, it was very interesting surfing around here, It was a great pleasure for me to visit and enjoy you site. Keep it running!

Well thank you. I “enjoy you comment”.

This is such a wonderful and informative way to reach others. I Will be more than glad to share this site

Again with the capitalised Word in the middle of a sentence. They’re not good at finishing sentences with full stops though.

In Zeiten von massenhaft Websitenmüll im Internet eine sehr gut aufgebaute Website, nicht überdimensioniertes Design und sehr gut recher-schierte Hintergrundinformationen.

Wow. Here’s what the German visitor was really saying:

In times of in great quantities Website garbage in the InterNet a very well developed Website, not oversized Design and very well researched background informations.

Aww, too kind. It’s true, I was going for the “not oversized design”. It’s nice to know I’m not part of the “great quanities website garbage”, too.

I dont even remember how i reached your site but it doesnt matter, cause i’m so happy i found it, it really made me think, keep up the good work

Excellent work fella - missing apostrophes, failing to capitalise words that need it, and no full stop on the end. He was obviously overcome with happiness from finding the site.

You’re website looks very good, it was a pleasure to be on you’re. Keep on the good work

“You’re website looks very good” ?!
“It was a pleasure to be on you’re.” ?!

Y O U R means YOUR, Y O U ‘ R E means YOU ARE! Aaaaagh! I’ll keep on the good work.

It’s a great website of yours. I surfed by and found it very informative. Bookmarked and check you back in a while

A nearly completely correct comment. Obviously our spammer hired a proof reader.

Whoa….check out this page…hmmm, and I thought this was only for the kids

Whoa… what did he find on the site that I’ve missed?!

Hi My wife and I would like to thank you all for this web site. Hours of pleasure and all

I guess this guy and his wife must have found whatever the previous guy did. Well, I’m glad I pleasured them!

All of these messages are posted by Anonymous, and none of them are leaving URLs for people to visit. So what’s the point?

Embarassing Photos!

Published
by
Howard
on January 14th 2005
in General
. 1 Comment

My friend (and boss!) Terry is still in contact with one of the best teachers I ever had: Sue, my former Drama and Theatre Studies teacher. (I say former quite deliberately instead of “old”, as a) she’d kill me, and b) she doesn’t look like she’s aged a day since I first knew her!). But I digress. I saw her briefly over Christmas and she promised to dig out some photos from back in the day. You can take a look below, I can’t remember (or work out) how old I am in the dance workshop pictures - I’m sure Sue will be able to remind me!

The top picture is the cast of the Caucasian Chalk Circle, which I did the lighting for, and my good friend Tom actually starred in instead of hiding behind the scenes with me. :) The last pic is one of Tom from around the same time.

The other two are much earlier pics, from some dance workshop thing I vaguely recall taking part in. Again I’m hoping Sue will be able to remind me of the details! Also Tom and I are both hoping she can track down a photo she used to have of Tom and I hanging off the ladder into the lighting box, if she has it, it’ll have been 9 years since Tom and I last saw it! :o

The cast of the Caucasian Chalk Circle
The only people I can name in this are Becky Stone, Liz Benford, Sarah Spencer, Ben Harwood, Clare Martin, Karen Purdy and Me! A lot of these must have been the year below me.

Some kind of dance workshop. A very young Howard! Some kind of dance workshop. A very young Howard!
Both of these pics show (left to right) Jo Goldsworthy, Richard Kerrison, Zoe Belcher, Me(!), Gemma Ellis and Nicola Haswell. Sad to say I have no idea what any of them are doing any more.

Tom and Henry (I think it's Henry!)
I think the guy behind Tom is Henry Street, but I couldn’t swear to that being his name. I’m terrible with the names of people I went to school with!

Mac mini

Published
by
Howard
on January 13th 2005
in Hardware
. 1 Comment

Richard blogged about this already, but because I’d read all the spec sheets I didn’t bother following the link to have a look at it. The Mac mini. Go and take a look at it. Isn’t that a thing of beauty? Hewn from the very fabric of geek lust: anodized aluminum into a 2.9lb brick of techno joy. At this point I’ll stop typing in order to make that Homer Simpson gurgling noise.

*gurgles*

I want one. Once I have some spare cash I shall finagle an educational discount and purchase one. I don’t even know what I want to do with it yet, I just think that every geek house should have something that small, that quiet, and godamnit, that shiny!

Let’s give a warm blogger welcome to…

Published
by
Howard
on January 12th 2005
in General
. Closed

Sean, who has revamped his site and started blogging on it. Apparently inspired in no small part by my site. Which is nice. :) You can find his ramblings (and information about his music) here: http://www.schizoidman.org.uk/

Woohoo!

Published
by
Howard
on January 11th 2005
in Games
. 4 Comments

This doesn’t often happen, so forgive me if I gloat a little, but: I beat Teech at RoN! I can’t remember the last time that happened.

Here’s a screen I don’t see very often:
I'm a winner, hahaha!

Of course the chances are that I won’t be able to repeat it, but victory felt gooood. :) A swift nuclear strike followed by a combination of ground troops, artillery and air power, and his capital was conquered. Mwaahahahah! :D Current 2005 score is 2-1 to Teech in 1on1 games.

Nooooo!

Published
by
Howard
on January 10th 2005
in General
. Closed

After blogging about how all my TiVo video woes were sorted, my TiVo died yesterday. :( It’ll get sent away for repair this week, but in the mean time I have ordered a replacement from a chap on eBay. He’s obviously just as much of a TiVo-hacker as I am as it is upgraded to 120Gb and has the cachecard/network connection: faster menus and faster video extraction. Woohoo!

I should get it on Wednesday. There’s no telling when the original TiVo will come back from repair!

TiVo Video Extraction and the 4:3 problem

Published
by
Howard
on January 8th 2005
in Software and TV
. 1 Comment

As some of you will know, I regularly “rip” TV shows that have been recorded by my TiVo so I can archive them to DVD. This has been a pretty hit and miss affair over the years, until fairly recently when I stumbled across a way to 100% reliably get the data off the TiVo. Once on a PC though I encountered a new challenge - the 4:3 problem.

For some reason the MPEG2 stream that I extract from the TiVo via TyTools is tagged with the 4:3 aspect ratio - regardless of the true ratio of the source. This means that when I create a DVD of widescreen content it tends to get squished into the middle of the screen unless the TV/DVD player is intelligent enough to anamorphically stretch the video.

The aspect ratio is stored in the MPEG stream, sometimes in just a header but more often striped throughout the program stream. I’ve tried various tools over the years that attempt to “patch” the stream to fix the aspect ratio, but they’ve all had their problems. Some need to decode and recompress the entire file in order to achieve the goal - something that can take upwards of 4 hours for a 2.5Gb file. Others try to patch the aspect ratio flag without altering the rest of the file, this often resulted in a file with audio and video wildly out of sync - intolerable!

So it’s with some relief that I come across the wonderful bit of software VideoReDo, The Fast Non-Linear MPEG2 Editor. It does exactly what it says on the tin; editing MPEG1 and MPEG2 streams with no fuss, but more importantly making the aspect ratio an option when saving the video. It can fix the ratio on a 2Gb file in a little under 5 minutes. Perfect!

I’ve just created a valid MPEG2 stream of tonights Derren Brown special - Messiah - which if you missed it will be repeated on E4 next Wednesday - recommended viewing for all critical thinkers, and while I think about it, required viewing for all of a more credulous nature!

The Library of Babel

Published
by
Howard
on January 6th 2005
in Books and General
. Closed

Whoa.

Someone pointed me at this in a discussion about data, information, knowledge (and the differences between them) and knowing the unknowable:

A (very) short story called The Library of Babel in which the symmetrically structured library represents the universe as it is conceived by rational man, and the library’s illegible books refers to man’s ignorance.

Fascinating.

What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?

Published
by
Howard
on January 6th 2005
in General
. 1 Comment

John Brockman, a literary agent and publisher of Edge, a science website, collects an annual list of provocative responses to provocative questions. This year his question is: “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” and it’s an excellent way to begin the new year. The answers are as varied as they are illuminating. It’s an interesting read, and a very thought provoking question and I shall be blogging with my own answer once I’ve articulated it properly.

Speaking of hard questions and belief, Richard has been writing some excellent pieces about the Church recently. Recommended reading.

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